Dirk Sings

I think the Observer is getting a jump start on April Fool's Day:

(also, watch for a complete review of Kansas City and the entire Midwest in Otter Fodder's first travel post coming soon...)

So much blogging. So little time.

I'm leaving town again this weekend so I'm going to cram several things into one post here to appease all the masses who can't start their day without a look at my blog.

Let's start with farts:
First, there's this. I have to say, I read several paragraphs on different pages of this site and found no jokes. I hate to be a dupe, but I think these people might be serious.







Don't be alarmed:
But there's a leprechaun on the loose in Mobile, Alabama. And yes, this is a real report from a real news station (see leprechaun link in left column).

Madness:
Let's talk b-ball. What a couple of great games yesterday! I'm not a Duke-hater, but it was kind-of gratifying to see them lose to a team that barely squeeked by the Ags. I know that "we- beat- them- and- they- beat- them- so- we- can- beat- them" argument is dumb, but it still makes me feel good. As for the other game. What a shot! What a bunch of shots! The one that tied it for the Zags, the one before that for the Zags (I don't know who shot any of these), and the game-winner. All incredible shots. The sips deserve that win. That was clutch.

That brings to mind this bit of sports musing: is it easier to feel good about a loss in basketball than in football? I mean, when a guy hits a shot like that one last night - off-balance, from beyond NBA 3-point range, with no time on the clock - you can't blame it on your defense. The guys just made a great play. It seems to me that in basketball, you can have an extraordinary offsensive play that there's just no answer for (see Kareem's sky hook, Bird's jumper, Jordan's first step, Shaq's smelly armpits). It's almost like golf. I remember last year's Master's tournament (because, ahem, I was there) when Tiger made 6 or 7 birdies in a row on Sunday to catch Chris DiMarco and eventually beat him in a playoff. After the tournament, DiMarco said something like: Hey, I shot 17 under par at Augusta. That's usually good enough to win any tournament. When a guy shoots 10 under on one round, there's just no way to compete with that. On the other hand, in football or hockey, there's always some defensive slip or something a defender could have done. At least it seems that way. Just a thought.

No more band-aided Bevos!:
Now, back to the t.u./West Virginia game (and this is where all the pansies who cheer for their rivals should pay attention) the above comments do NOT mean that I'm happy that t.u. won. For the record, I am never happy when t.u. wins a sporting event. That's because I went to their RIVAL school. Rivals don't cheer for each other. That's what makes them rivals. If they cheered for each other then they would be buddies, or acquaintences, or "professionals". I can be happy for t.u. that they have a successful academic program, that they generate great minds and bring prestige to the state. I can be sympathetic and supportive to sips when circumstances beyond athletics warrant it. When the Bonfire tragedy happened in 1999, Texas students showed a lot of class in their support of Aggies, and even the tradition that is aimed at rallying our team to beat theirs. I would do the same if the tragedy had occured in Austin rather than College Station. But the following week at Kyle Field, the sips didn't take it easy on us because they felt sorry for us. Because even the sips (the good ones, at least) understand that football (or any other sport) is not life. In life, we can support each other. In football, not so much. Not only that, to take it easy on us would only have been an insult. We needed to win that game fair and square. And, finally, if there were some t.u. players who, in the back of their minds, thought they should let up a little because of the Bonfire thing, they were classy enough never to say that in public which would have, of course, only made things worse. Again, the issue is this: it's only football. It is not classless to wish failure on your rivals. It's loyalty. I have a lot of friends who went to t.u. and we get along fine. We tease each other and gloat when we get a chance, but if Sandy or Sharon or Bob or any of my sipper friends ever needed anything, they know they could call me. But if they ever want someone to cheer for the longhorns, they know they can't. That's the way it is. We're rivals. How many Cowboys fans do you know who cheer for the Redskins in the playoffs? When the Packers' season ended with the regular season this year, do you think everyone in Green Bay pulled out their purple and gold to cheer on their second-best-loved-team, the Vikings, because they're "in the same conference?" You gotta be kidding me! They're RIVALS! I can possibly see rooting for a team to win if it would have a direct effect on your team's rank or postseason (as in a playoff seed) but I'm not even for that in college football because there is seldom any direct effect. That thing about "well, we lost to Texas so we should hope they win out" is a crock. If we lose to texas, we lost. There's not make-good for that. I want our team to live with it and work their butt off so it doesn't happen again next year. I want to beat our opponents head-to-head on the field, not by weaseling into a rankings tie by virtue of RPI or average margin of victory or any of that.

Whew! Ok, if you read all of that, thank you for your patience. Now go get a job because you have way too much time on your hands.

ESPNU:
And finally, along those same lines, I bring you this bit of genius.

Cornerstone

Yesterday at lunch, I found myself elbow-deep in a pot of green beans at a South Dallas soup kitchen. I met a homeless man named Newman who used to teach English at SMU before his addiction to alcohol reduced him to lonliness and poverty. If you'd like to meet other Newmans, visit www.cornerstonedallas.org and join them for lunch sometime.

Elevator Talk

This morning there was one of those guys in the elevator who really felt a need to make a deep connection with me between floors 1 and 12. Telling me all about the crazy weather and how his office in Rowlett was flooded and they had to rent some industrial... dryer... things... life.....
force....... draining.............. must...................... reach................................ cyanide.
I tried to smile and grunt approvingly, but the room was spinning and the elevator seemed to have stopped. Felt like Ted Ferguson after a botched stunt.

Ags 57, Tigers 58

How could we lose to these guys? They can't spell "Go" and they have this.

TAMU 66, Syracuse 58

I love this man.









This one, I'm a little worried about.

Home Fires Burning

Thankfully, no one I know has been affected directly by the Panhandle fires so far. Last night was apparently kind-of dicey though. Officials announced a voluntary evacuation of Lipscomb County (where my parents and brother live). Mom had Andy on the roof with a water hose. But winds died down overnight and crews were able to contain the fire. Dad says there isn't nearly as much smoke in the air today as there was yesterday.
For some incredible photos from the fires, click here. Or give some love to the good folks at the Amarillo Globe-News.

The Final Leg

Colin and Julie are on the final leg of their human-powered circumnavigation of the globe. Yes, that's right. After oaring, hiking, cycling, and skiing their way across almost every longitude, they started their bike journey from Lima, Peru to Vancouver, British Columbia today. Incredible.
Check out the latest update here. Or learn more about the expedition here.

Lenten Lesson #1

Well, it has taken two weeks for me to learn something, but I think I realized my first Lenten lesson this week. It has been a turbulent week in my family – for reasons I won’t discuss here. And in all the stress, I’ve found myself wanting to “escape” to Starbucks or to the woods or a café (all my typical “escape” places) with a cup of coffee. I came to realize I rely on coffee to deal with life. I’m not sure why coffee has any impact on my ability to handle stress, but it does. I think it has to do with my pace of life. You can’t be in a hurry with a cup of coffee in your hand. It’s hard to stress while sitting at a sidewalk café with a cup of coffee. But now, without coffee, I’m left to dealing with problems through prayer. Imagine that. I can either bury my nose in work or hobby or project and ignore stressors, or I can pause, breathe deep, and take them to the Lord. I'm trying to do the latter.

We're In!

For the first time since 1987, the Fightin' Texas Aggies will make an appearance in the NCAA mens basketball tournament. Awesome. It doesn't get awesomer. I am so awesomely pumped. I hope they play awesome and beat Syracuse by an awesome margin. Nobody call me Thursday night or I shall be awesomely put-out.

Bracket

Crazy Christians make the Non-Newspaper in New York

From the February 2 New York Times:

Evangelical Filmmakers Criticized for Hiring Gay Actor
Christian ministers were enthusiastic at the early private screenings of "End of the Spear," made by Every Tribe Entertainment, an evangelical film company. But...on Jan. 12, though, the Rev. Jason Janz took the filmmakers to task for casting Chad Allen, an openly gay man and an activist, in the movie's lead role...An assistant pastor at the independent Red Rocks Baptist Church in Denver, Mr. Janz posted his comments on his fundamentalist Christian Web site, sharperiron.org.

Two things about this story make me crazy:
1. The nutty Christians lambasting someone for hiring a gay actor. Isn't this just what Jesus wants us to do - hire, work with, get to know lost people? Think of it, by acting in this film, this guy is helping to spread the gospel. Beautiful. Of course the other way to look at this is from a pragmatic standpoint - I wonder which is harder to find: a not-gay actor or a not-nutty Christian!
2. The New York Times gatekeeping here is atrocious. As far as I can tell, this story is about some mildly unpleasant comments on a very obscure blog. Can someone tell me what makes this news? Hey, New York Times: Guess what. This very day, there have been thousands of highly offensive posts on thousands of blogs - some incendiary. Some even treasonous. I suspect that this particular heretofore-anonymous-person-with-a-keyboard could have said the sky is falling and Neela Banerjee would have never paid attention. But it's fun to pick on nutty Christians. If this is all it takes to make news, I expect a front page story in tomorrow's edition about my blog! Heck, for that I'll even say that something whacky...Oprah is the antichrist!...I sold my sould to Dirk Nowitzki!..."Friends" was a good TV show!

What I'm Reading

Introduction to the Old Testament Prophets by Hobart Freeman

Luke gave me this book before he skipped the country. I think it wasn't dense enough for him. It certainly covers some info that I didn't know before as well as all the sides of various debates over prophecy interpretation usually reserved for patch-elbowed, tweek-clad, thickly-bespectacled, messy-headed types in seminary faculty lounges. The first half of the book is this kind of survey of interpretation debates. The last half comprises a 10-12 page introduction for each of the Hebrew prophets. I'm finding the last half to be more useful.

The Broker by John Grisham

Just can't get enough Grisham. So yeah, it's always about a lawyer. And yeah, he's always from the South. And yeah, there's usually a woman whose relationship with the protagonist is plutonic but promising. And yeah, he likes to illustrate the dangers of wealth alot. And yeah, his protagonists usually seem to escape the bad guys without really beating them. But even with all that, the guy keeps my attention. This one has a lot more cloak-and-dagger stuff in it than his other works. Most of the book is set in Italy, which was enjoyable. I read it during the Olympics and some of the similarities were remarkable.


The Texas Aggie Bonfire: Tradition & Tragedy at Texas A&M by Irwin A. Tang

Got this one on a lark. Just happened to see it at the library. In 1999, the world-famous bonfire at Texas A&M University collapsed killing 12 students and injuring dozens. There hasn't been a bonfire at A&M since then (at least not officially) and there may never be again. I can't tell you the number of hours I spent in my college days killing trees, loading and unloading trucks, and wiring logs into the bonfire stack from a rope-and-plank swing. I have been right where they were when they died. It's eerie.

As for the book, I'm a little uneasy about reading explanations of Aggie traditions from a non-reg. (That is, a student who wasn't in the Corps of Cadets. Old habits die hard.) But it's not bad. Not really well-written, but pretty fair so far. Brings to light the details of the bonfire tragedy more than anything I've read or seen, including news reports at the time of the collapse.

Lent

So my church is all about "rediscovering" ancient worship practices lately. I think it's pretty cool, but today it has me in a funk because it has taken away my beloved Starbucks. Lent started Wednesday and, as part of our foray into things liturgical, some of us at IBC are observing Lent this year. What little I've read about Lent so far says that it should be a time of sacrifice and repentance, remembering and sharing in the suffering of Jesus. So I figured, if I'm supposed to suffer here, might as well hit where it hurts. And I gave up coffee for Lent. So far, the headaches haven't been that bad, but the urges are very strong. I imagine this is what it feels like to quit smoking.
Clean for three days and counting...